Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is a remaster of the original Plants vs. Zombies, released in 2009, a game that has been ported to more platforms than Skyrim. How does Replanted bring an aging tower defense into the modern age?
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted
Developer: PopCap Studios, The Lost Pixels
Price: $20
Platform: PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS5 code for review.
As I started up Plants vs. Zombies, I heard the familiar tune of the original main menu screen playing through my television speakers. I was in for a treat, to be sure. Plants vs. Zombies ticks a few boxes that put it in my good graces.
An HD reimagining of the main menu from the Steam release many years ago is plastered across my screen, featuring many old options and a few new ones. Co-Op and Player vs. Player options now adorn the main menu, along with the standard adventure mode, mini-games, puzzle mode, and survival mode.
Much was as I remembered it, and as I began playing, I remembered quite a bit. Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game where you’re defending your house by planting autonomous and anthropomorphized plants. Your house is on the left, the zombies are coming from the right, and you’re planting defense.
As I explored Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, I saw a lot of familiar faces, modes, and jokes. I could see the upscaled images of the plants. The game showed me some never-before-seen concept art from the design stages of the original game.
I thought it was pretty good! It wasn’t until I ran into a few bugs that the seams holding Replanted together unraveled. I wanted to verify some of my suspicions about the quality of Replanted, so I reinstalled the Plants vs. Zombies Game of the Year edition on Steam and compared it to the original.
Laura Shigihara mentioned in a tweet that the dynamic audio she worked so hard on was no longer present and I can confirm that the songs come in hot. Likewise, EA has claimed they used no AI upscaling, but there are a considerable number of things that look downright bizarre in Replanted.
For example, in the original Plants vs. Zombies, the plants’ pictures are centered in the seed packet that represents them in the game. In Replanted, the plants have been made bigger, but the packets themselves have not, so the plants burst out of the confines of their window.
Furthermore, there have been boasts of never-before-seen concept art that apparently is anything but, according to Rich Werner, the original artist for Plants vs. Zombies. These last few things all speak to a bigger issue, not involving the original team for the remaster.
Since the leak, there have been videos making their way around the internet about the performance. Not only is the performance in these videos questionable, but they have tons of bugs and issues.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m playing the PlayStation 5 version of the game, but it ran just fine. I have seen lots of videos of slowdown and nasty bugs, and I can’t replicate them on the PlayStation version.
That’s not to say they’re not there, and surely, if the PC version is as buggy as it looks, it’s likely bugs do exist in this version. But I suspect the way these people have acquired access to the game might be the cause of these bugs. I ran into only one.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted plays about how you’d expect it to play on the version I played. I was acquiring trophies correctly. I managed to get through adventure mode, puzzle mode, survival mode, and all the mini-games without issue.
The one bug I ran into was during puzzle gameplay, which does affect adventure mode. The player will occasionally have to pick up a seed packet off the battlefield, and to do that, you need to use the joystick to move the cursor over the seed packet.
Numerous times, I wasn’t able to pick up seed packets. Meaning, I had to complete the puzzles without new plants. It wasn’t always the case, and it didn’t happen to all seed packets. Sometimes, there’d just be a packet I really wanted that I couldn’t pick up.
However, for the most part, Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted ran exactly as I expected. The big advantage is being able to speed up the game and play at up to 2.5x speed. It’s tough to keep up with what’s going on at that speed. But when you’ve got a good defense going, it’s nice. Real nice.
Another nice addition is the Cloudy Day and Rest in Peace modes. Cloudy Day is just a series of levels where thunderstorms appear throughout the day, reducing the cost of plants at the expense of sun collection.
Rest in Peace mode is almost like a roguelike mode, having you play through the adventure mode with only a single lawnmower to guard your house, and if you lose, you have to start over from the beginning.
There’s a big debate about whether or not the team used AI upscaling to work on some of the art in the game.
I’m curious about the methods they used for upscaling if AI wasn’t used, because the seed packet art looks dubious. In the original game, the plants sit centered in the seed packet so you can see the entire plant. The upscaled plants are bursting at the seams, and many portraits break out of the rectangular confines of their seed packets.
So, while I think Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted at its core is a serviceable remaster, I can’t imagine recommending someone play this over the original, outside of being able to play it on modern consoles, of course.
The PvP mode seems a little unbalanced in the zombies’ favor. The co-op mode I found more annoying than anything, but I didn’t play very much, as my gaming partner was only available for enough time to check out the PvP.
I don’t think the use of AI upscaling, faked never-before-seen concept art, or not using the dynamic audio ruins the experience. But it’s more a question of why?
If these shortcuts weren’t used, would the game be a better product? Undoubtedly. But by how much? And I think that’s the question we’ll all be faced with when it comes to deciding whether or not to buy Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted.
The Final Word
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted at its core is the same game you played 15 years ago, but with shortcuts in development, not consulting the original team, and foolish choices, we’re left with a product that’s barely better than the one you likely already own.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
